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Pros: Magnificent adventure, the rise and fall of Empire, a symbolic cautionary tale on several levels.

Cons: A few rough patches, perhaps due to the Film's financing, new personnel, Huston's failing health.

The Bottom Line: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING is John Huston's summing up of the lessons of his adventurous life, a film he tried to make for nearly 30 years.

*****

Looked down upon now as an Imperialist, Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Man Who Would Be King," thought for many years the perfect short story. Perhaps, that is why John Huston harbored an oft disappointed desire to put it on film. Awkward financing (Huston was never paid), and personnel changes, may contribute to an indifferent beginning, but once on its way, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING never looks back until the end. 

As in the short story, Peachy Toliver Carnahan, after a three year absence, drags himself, from a hot Indian marketplace, crowded with the fools, the blind, and the holy of the World, into the editorial offices of the Northern Star. He comes to tell Editor Kipling what he and his friend, Daniel Dravot, have been up to. They have played the fool and priest, crossed deserts, entered the Khyber Pass, swum rivers, scaled the highest mountains, gone snow blind, gathered an army, won a kingdom . . . 

That is the raw stuff of Huston's film. Carnahan (Michael Caine) recalls he met Kipling (Christopher Plummer) on a train leaving Lahore. Carnahan was attempting surreptitiously to return Kipling's watch, which he had stolen in the station. Failing that, he cruelly threw an Indian from the train and claimed to have retrieved said watch. When that failed, too, Carnahan confessed, had he but seen by the watch fob that Kipling was a Free Mason, he would never have robbed him at all because Carnahan and his pal Dravot are also Masons. 

Peachy and Kipling engage in a Masonic rite.

Carnahan explains, he is "a stranger going to the West to seek for what was lost." 

"Where do you come from?" Kipling is coached to ask. 

"From the East," Carnahan replies, "and I am hoping you will give my message on The Square for the sake of the Widow's Son." 

Huston's film, as is often the case, disarmingly uses symbolism, in this case the symbolism of Masonry, to inform the story and add layers of meaning to its adventurous plot. Puzzling to some, it opens out its meaning when the symbolism is understood. 

As a good Mason, Kipling takes Carnahan's message involving a new swindle to Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) on another train, and presently Kipling is called upon to bail the pair of rogues out of new troubles.

After one of their periodic assessments of the meaning of their lives, Carnahan and Dravot sign a contract swearing off women and liquor, and they return to Kipling in order to pitch a scheme for seed money. They are both old Regular Soldiers of Her Majesty the Queen, well versed in military methods and the use of firearms. Disguised as a Priest and a Holy Fool, they propose to take 20 Martini-Henry rifles (bought with their loot) to a place they've only heard of, Kafiristan, where Alexander the Great in 328 B.C. brought his army of Elite Macedoneans and multi-ethnic conscripts, to the edge of the known world. There, Carnahan and Dravot hope, they will rise above their "untouchable" status and form a Raj rivaling the British Empire. 

And, following many adventures, half sub-consciously using the methods of Alexander, they arrive in Kafiristan. They find a loyal lieutenant in "Billy Fish," (the distinguished Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey, who later acted in THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN [1983], A PASSAGE TO INDIA [1984] and MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE [1985], etc). A Gurhka, sole survivor of the last British expedition to the territory, Billy Fish looks down on the heathens who spared his life and longs to return to the Tradition of British Arms. With his help, Daniel and Peachy conquer Kafiristan. 

Eventually, they are summoned by ruling High Mullahs of the region to the High Town, an ancient city, a Shangri-la. Just when the Priests are about to eliminate Carnahan and Dravot (their competition), they recognize the Masonic Pendant around Daniel's neck. It is the same symbol Alexander the Great brought 2,200 years before. All around them are symbols similar to Masonic emblems, all brought by Alexander. 

Daniel Dravot does indeed become King of Kafiristan, and is given Alexander's treasure, which will make Peachy and himself amomg the richest men in the British Empire. In fact, Dravot is regarded by the Priests as the Second Coming of Alexander, a God! Dravot outwardly discounts this idea but dreams of receiving The Order of the Garter from Queen Victoria herself. All goes well, until, as often they have seen others do in their adventures, Daniel is filled with hubris. He feels he really is a King, and insists on breaking the Contract. 

Kipling's short story, but not quite the film, ends where it began.

Throughout this rigorous adventure tale, these two Children of Victoria, impoverished Tommies who built the Empire, climb to higher and higher levels of meaning before their Fall. Peachy and Daniel, priest and fool, blind men, adventurers, soldiers, law-givers, rajahs, crucified christs, represent to Huston the noble aspirations, greedy pursuits, and silly failings of men. At each step of their ascent, they meet men who are at first humble and fear "enemies all around" but then become full of themselves, lord it over people, and end up (as the Scots who invented Golf) having others play polo with their heads. 

Throughout THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING are little references to Huston's great films on Man's folly in seeking material riches -- i.e., the pack animals scattering Alexander's Treasure -- as the burros did, spreading out on the montana in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948). 

And everywhere are the Masonic (Alexander's? Christ's?) symbols of the cross, the square, the level, the Carpenters rule, the plumb, the compass and the eye. Finally, there is The Bridge of Life. The more often you watch the film, the more applications of the symbols you find. 

This is not to say that there are not marvelous sequences of action (photographed by Oswald Morris), a jaunty Anglo-Indian Musical Score composed by Maurice Jarre (with some folk themes contributed by Huston's son Danny), nor magnificent sets designed by the legendary Alexander Trauner. In addition, there is rowdy, raucous, ironic, unsentimental humor -- a mark of Huston's work. For instance, at the beginning of a crucial battle, a file of priests, bells ringing, eyes shut against the evil of the World, cross between the opposing forces. Both sides fall on their faces in worship. When the priests have passed, the forces leap up undeterred and slaughter each other. 

I also find possible inside jokes, as when Daniel first admires Roxanne (of the same name as the middleastern princess Alexander married). Roxanne is played by Shakira, former model, Miss Guyana, who had just married Michael Caine. "Easy, Peachy," says Connery's Dravot, "I'm just star gazing." 

But most of all, there is the wisdom and dream of an old man who has seen it all, who is going through troubles of his own, and who knows eventually, whatever our religion, we are all Christs. 

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING heralded Huston's return to critical favor. Dying of Emphysema, struggling with a young Roxanne himself, John Huston went on to direct at least three more masterpieces: WISEBLOOD, UNDER THE VOLCANO, PRIZZI'S HONOR, THE DEAD. Pick your own three from these. 

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March 17, 2002: You may have noted that Kafiristan must have been one of those fiefdoms in what is now Afghanistan. In fact, it is likely that Iskandergul is what we today call Kandarhar, both named after Alexander the Great, site of much of the fighting we saw on the nightly news. 

We might accuse the film of racism and sexism, but, in fact, aside from accurately portraying Kipling's attitudes as those of a loyal son of empire, which he was at the time, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING shows life on "The Northwest Frontier" rather like it was then; in fact as it is today, now that we have taken over the burdens of Imperialism (with the added difficulty of having to pretend not to). 

Did not the Taliban, indeed now the Northern Alliance, reduce women to figures seen but not heard? Do we not lump the rather fair skinned, often hazel-eyed Afghans in with Arabs, Sudanese, etc? 

The next time this plot is used in a movie, Peachy and Daniel will be cashiered American commandos.